The Prince (Sleeping Beauty) Character Analysis

Overview

In Soman Chainani’s Beasts and Beauty, the prince at the heart of the “Sleeping Beauty” story is not a passive hero awaiting a kiss but a sixteen-year-old caught in a nightly ordeal with an invisible thief who drains his blood. What begins as a hunt for a demon becomes a quiet rebellion against patriarchal expectations. This character analysis examines the prince’s journey from victim to active chooser of his own unconventional bond.

For a broader look at the collection’s aims, see the book overview.

Plot Role and Motivations

The prince’s motivating conflict is twofold: he must survive the nightly blood loss that leaves him pale and ashamed, and he must satisfy his father’s demand for a wife and heir. His initial reaction is to seek help from the king and queen, who dismiss his complaints as spiritual or medical problems requiring a bride. The prince’s motivation shifts when he resolves to trap the intruder rather than endure passively. This decision shows a character who acts, even if his actions lead to unintended connection.

The story positions him as a foil to traditional princes: he is “beautiful” and “sleeping” in the sense that the thief visits him like a sleeping beauty, inverting the fairy-tale trope. His later choices — searching for the one-handed thief, returning the severed hand, accepting nightly visits — reveal a deeper motivation: to restore a stolen part of another person and, in doing so, to reclaim his own agency.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

The prince’s traits emerge through specific actions:

• Perseverance: When the demon continues despite prayers and courtships, he builds a razor-toothed trap in his own bed.
• Compassion: Upon discovering the thief is a human boy, he does not kill him but instead spends months searching to return the severed hand.
• Defiance of expectation: He marries the Contessa of Tagheria because she “claimed it” and he offered “no objection,” yet he later isolates himself in a tower with a single window, rejecting the role of eager husband.
• Loyalty: After the contessa’s death, he brings the thief to court, and when the king demands an heir, he retreats to his tower permanently, refusing to participate in the patriarchal line.
• Acceptance of difference: The baby with rose-red hair that appears on his sheets — a child that bites the king but causes the prince no pain — is raised in the tower with the thief’s nightly visits continuing “like a visit from mother moon.”

The text frames his smile as “a blissful crescent” after nights with the thief, suggesting an emotional fulfillment that his arranged marriage cannot provide.

Chronological Arc

The prince’s arc can be divided into five phases:

1. Victimhood (first sixteen years): He wakes each morning with blood on his sheets, wounds on his body, and no explanation. He feels shame and fear, wondering why a “demon” has chosen him.
2. Discovery (the trap): He sets a ring with razor-steel teeth in his bed. On the third night, the thief comes, and a cry yanks the prince from sleep. He sees “a boy about his age” clutching a severed wrist. The thief escapes, leaving his hand behind.
3. Search and marriage (spring to twelfth night): The blood loss stops, so the prince chooses a bride, the cold Contessa of Tagheria. His glow fades; he lies awake dreaming of the thief. During a twelve-day tour, he asks to meet townspeople missing hands, giving gold to lure the thief. In Ravenna he finds the boy, sunken and starving, and slips him a note to meet in the Forest of Edan on his wedding night.
4. Reconnection and rebellion (the wedding night and after): The prince brings the severed hand to the forest and fits it to the thief’s wrist. Tears from the boy sprout roses; the prince awakens with new wounds. He returns to the wedding transformed, and soon builds a tower sealed with rose-carved doors to which his wife has no key. He allows the thief to visit nightly.
5. Resolution (after the contessa’s death): The contessa tries to kill him with a knife; he survives with a ring of roses around his neck. She dies in a rage. The prince brings the thief to court. When the king demands an heir, the prince retreats to his tower and never comes out. Eventually a baby with rose-red hair appears on his sheets, and the thief continues to watch over them both.

Relationships

The Thief (the Ravenna boy)

This is the central relationship. The prince and the thief share a bond that begins as predator-prey and evolves into mutual dependence. The thief drinks the prince’s blood voluntarily, and the prince accepts these visits. Their connection is sealed when the prince returns the hand and the thief weeps roses. The text describes their shadows as “twined, like two sides of a moon.” After the contessa’s death, the thief takes a place at the family table, and later visits the tower each night to watch over the prince and the baby. This relationship subverts the typical fairy-tale romance by replacing the princess with a male thief and replacing rescue with ongoing visitation.

The Contessa of Tagheria

The marriage is transactional. The prince chooses her because she “simply claimed it” and he wants someone to “captain his fate.” She is jealous of the thief and eventually attempts murder. He survives, and she dies in a fit of rage. The relationship highlights the prince’s disinterest in traditional marriage and his prioritization of the bond with the thief.

The King and Queen

The king dismisses the prince’s blood loss as a need for a wife. The king later demands an heir, which prompts the prince’s final retreat. The parents are portrayed as indifferent or enabling; they continue eating toast after the contessa’s death, treating these events as “the kinds of things that happened between sons and wives.” The prince’s line “If only fathers invested in love as much as they do in sons” captures his critique of patriarchal succession.

The Baby

The child with rose-red hair appears after the king’s demand for an heir. The baby bites the king, but the prince suffers no pain from him. The child lives in the tower with the prince, and the thief continues to visit. The baby can be interpreted as a symbol of the prince and thief’s union — though the text leaves the mechanism ambiguous.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Themes and Symbols

This story engages several major themes of Beasts and Beauty:

• Beauty as a curse: The prince is described as a “beauty waiting to be kissed awake,” yet his beauty attracts the thief and makes him vulnerable. The contessa’s “beauty turns to beast” when spurned. For more, see beauty as a curse.

• Subversion of fairy-tale conventions: The prince is the sleeping beauty, not the rescuer; the thief is the active visitor; the “true love’s kiss” is replaced by blood-letting and rose-growing. See subversion of fairy-tale conventions.

• Agency and self-rescue: The prince rescues himself by setting the trap and then actively shaping his own life — he chooses the thief, builds his tower, refuses the heir mandate. Read more at agency and self-rescue.

• Queer and non-traditional relationships: The central bond is between two men, and the story ends with a non-nuclear family of prince, thief, and baby. The narrative treats this as peaceful rather than scandalous. Explore queer and non-traditional relationships.

• Power of naming and identity: The prince is never given a proper name in the story, only “the prince,” which reinforces his role as a type rather than an individual — until he refuses that role by choosing the thief. See power of naming and identity.

• Blood and roses: Blood symbolizes life, exchange, and connection. Roses appear as a scent before each visit, as a wound on the prince’s neck (a ring of roses), and as a growth from the thief’s tears. The trap’s steel teeth become the thorn motif later.

For the story’s overall meaning, see ending explained.

Questions and Answers

1. Why does the prince decide to set a trap for the demon rather than continue praying or seeking medical help?
   The prince had exhausted other options: prayers, the king’s doctor, confiding in his mother. The text states he “set a trap” after realizing the attacks continued despite his efforts. His decision reflects a shift from passive suffering to active problem-solving.

2. What is the prince’s state of mind when he marries the Contessa of Tagheria?
   He marries her because the blood loss had ceased and “there was no reason to delay.” But the text notes he “offered no objection” as if “yearning for a soul to captain his fate.” This suggests a resignation or lack of investment rather than love.

3. How does the prince manage to find the thief after the trap?
   During a twelve-day pre-wedding tour with the contessa, he asks at each stop to meet townspeople missing a hand, giving them sacks of gold. In Ravenna he finds the thief, now sunken and starving, and slips him a note to meet in the Forest of Edan on the twelfth night.

4. What is the significance of the ring of roses around the prince’s neck?
   After the contessa slashes his throat with a carving knife, the prince appears at breakfast with a ring of roses precisely where the wound was. The text says the thief’s own throat later bears “a jagged scar, like one made by a carving knife, the same width and size as the ring of roses,” as if they “traded beauty and pain.” This symbolically links the two characters.

5. Does the prince ever regret his choices, especially the isolation from his family?
   The text does not show explicit regret. The prince “retreated to his tower and never came out” after the king demanded an heir, and he lived there with his son and the thief “shut away from the world.” The final line describes the thief’s visits “like a visit from mother moon,” implying contentment. Interpretation: the prince seems at peace with his non-traditional life.

For further discussion, see questions and answers.